The present invention relates to a mounting apparatus for applying a flux or other adhesive substance onto small balls, such as solder balls, and mounting these to an electronic component or such other workpiece, as well as a method thereof.
When forming a bump on an electrode of a workpiece, to which an electronic component is to be mounted, a solder ball or other small ball is often employed. Namely, a solder ball is placed on an electrode of workpiece, and then the workpiece is heated to have the solder ball soldered on the electrode; a bump is thus formed. In order to ensure the soldering between solder ball and electrode, a flux is normally employed. The flux has to be applied on either the solder ball or the electrode, before the solder ball is placed on the electrode.
For applying flux, a suction head holding solder balls by a vacuum is lowered to the surface of flux kept in a boat until the lower end of solder ball touches on the surface of flux. A small amount of flux is thus transferred to the small ball. The flux is applied only no the tip end of the small ball by controlling the lowering stroke of the suction head.
As the diameter of solder balls getting smaller, a precise control of stroke is required when lowering the suction head. In the above described application procedure, however, a trivial error in the input control data readily results in a wide dispersion in the quantity of flux application, or insufficiency is caused in the quantity of flux application on the solder ball.
Similar problems likewise arise when applying a solder paste conductive glue on a conductive ball of copper, gold, etc. before mounting the ball to a workpiece.